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There are many reasons why anti-poverty measures are less than successful in Africa. In a recent column, the Ugandan commentator Charles Onyango-Obbo provides one you've never heard before:

...sometimes plans to end poverty fail because of, well, poverty. Take a recent case from western Kenya...A lot of money was pumped into a programme to save poor rural women from walking many kilometres to fetch water. The women, however, didn't collect water from the new modern "wells".

Were the women ignorant? Not at all. With just one harvest a year, the women had a lot of time on their hands. Without electricity, TV, and other distractions at home, they would be bored to death. They preferred to continue walking many kilometres away to collect water, because it helped them kill time.

Beryl Bainbridge on smoking (note her observation on the decline in language ability upon quitting, it's something I can attest to, and something that those who oppose tobacco never mention):

I gave up smoking, without the aid of pills, hypnotism or patches, 17 days ago, having been told that if I didn’t I mightn’t have a leg to stand on. Well-meaning friends hastened to assure me that within 48 hours I would see an improvement in my complexion, my eyes, my hair. Needless to say, I’m still looking. What I have noticed, and deplore, is a return of my sense of smell. I had no idea that the odour of leftover food could pervade a house. Nor had I realised that I would regrow hairs in my nose, causing prolonged fits of sneezing.
I have no urge to take up the habit again, but I now talk to myself — mostly about Winston Churchill — sing hymns out loud while in the queue at the bank, and find it extremely difficult to construct a worthwhile sentence.

Comments

Riiiiight. A lot of time on their hands. I recommend "The Ugly American". A good commentary on facile explanations and solutions to problems in developing nations. (The ugly american by the way is the good guy!)

"America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them; and every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American." - George W. Bush

"America is not only for the whites , but it is for all. Who is the America? The American is you, me and that. When we go to America we will become Americans and there is no a race or nationalism called America and the Americans are those Africans, Indians, Chinese, and Europeans and whoever goes to America will become American...American is for all of us and the whole world had made and created America. All the people all over the world had made America and it shall accordingly be for all of us. I will never feel ashamed when I claim for my right in America and it will not be strange when I raise my v…